Page 26 of A Love Most Brutal (Morelli Family #2)

MAXIM

The Donovanns and their three kids have arrived by the time Marianna comes downstairs with her hair dampening the shoulders of a cranberry red sweater. Seeing her niece across the table from me, my wife walks directly to us.

It took me fifteen minutes before I’d calmed down enough to rejoin the family upstairs while she showered. I still don’t feel fully recovered.

Seeing Marianna fight is one thing, but fighting with her, being the sole focus of her attention like that—I fear it’s too much for me to handle.

“Hi, little,” Mary says to Angel, but she stops by my side and squeezes my shoulder. I remember her plea that I look in love with her , for her niece’s sake, and follow her lead, turning to kiss the back of her hand. She smells clean, and like the subtle perfume she wore on our wedding day.

With one steady look of affection, we’re the picture of a loving couple. Her siblings and their spouses freeze, watching the exchange, and pink tinges Marianna’s cheeks.

“Hi,” Angel scurries up to Marianna’s side and gives her a hug. She’s nearly as tall as her.

The boy is taller, and he gives Marianna a side hug too before sliding in his socks across the wood floor back to the living room to resume the video game he’s been playing with Leo.

“Maxim was teaching me Russian words,” Angel explains. Marianna raises her eyebrows and leans against me.

“What have you learned then?” she asks.

“She learned hello,” I say.

“ Privyet ,” she supplies and I nod.

We go through the other handful of words like this, me saying them in english, Angel repeating them back in Russian; baby sister, thank you, ice cream, art .

She’s written them all down in her drawing notebook, and I’m impressed at her pronunciation.

Charmed, too. I haven’t spent much time around teenagers, and I’m not sure if they’re all this way or if she is just a particularly nice one.

“Oh, and he taught me this,” she looks up at her aunt with a grin and haltingly recites the phrase from her notes, “ Ya lyublyu tyebya. ”

“And what’s that one?”

Angel looks at me expectantly, still smiling. I clear my throat and am all too aware of my grip on Marianna’s waist.

“I love you,” I say, and then repeat the phrase in Russian.

Angel repeats it again and yells it to her mom in the kitchen, who says “Good work, hon!” not tuned in to the conversation at all.

Marianna has stilled at my side, her torso under my hand suddenly tense.

I look up at her, her eyes already on me, and then she lets out a breath and smiles at her niece.

“You’ll get your teenager card taken away if you keep being so sweet,” Marianna says.

“Don’t listen to her!” Willa says as she enters the room.

This is the first I’ve seen her, though Marianna has been visiting most days to help with the baby.

Two weeks after her Cesarean, she’s in better spirits than I’d expect after an abdominal surgery.

“Just because you were a devil, doesn’t mean all teenagers are. ”

“Yeah,” Nate agrees, coming in with a stack of plates. “Only most of them.”

Marianna extricates herself from being pressed up against my side, charade over, and I feel the absence of her heat immediately.

Getting a good night’s sleep without her last night was not a possibility.

I told every guard and Jean to call me if she returned and spent the night sulking around in my office above the nightclub.

I slept for a short two hours in one of my chairs and woke with a dry throat and a twinge in my neck. Miserable. That’s how I would describe myself without Marianna Morelli after two fucking weeks. She’s turned me into half a man without her.

She looks tired, too, gray under her brown eyes, but I won’t let myself believe that this is because of me.

Marianna has made her lack of affection clear.

There is friendship between us at the best of times, disdain and scorn at the worst, and chemistry only when we’re having sex or making out in her sister’s basement. The rest is a farce.

From her carrier, the little baby starts fussing and Marianna is closest, so she rubs a pump of sanitizer on her hands before she scoops up the newborn and rocks her a bit. She looks at the baby with such tenderness it makes my stomach ache.

“Are you hungry, Miss Clara?” Marianna coos, and lightly swipes her pinky over the baby’s forehead.

“She’s always hungry,” Willa groans. “Huh, tiny girl?” She leans over her baby in her sister’s arms, and both of them talk to the baby in light voices for a moment before Marianna hands her off.

This is how the Morelli house always is; comfortable, soft smiles and laughing, warm food, teasing over a table, quick jokes and quicker comebacks. It’s a delight to be with this family. I don’t believe any Orlov guest could say the same about mine.

Marianna sits to my left at dinner, and Angel to her left.

The two of them mutter quietly about things I can’t hear during the meal.

It’s like they’re friends, not an aunt and a teenager.

It endears me as much as it intrigues me, and I wonder what I would have to say to a thirteen-year-old girl beyond the novelty of teaching phrases in a different language.

I think she would tire of me quickly, the bore that I am.

When I asked Marianna what the kids knew of the business, she admitted that it was very little, but an increase every day. They’d kept them mostly sheltered all their lives, but after the events of last year, figured they had to start teaching them.

I don’t remember a time when I didn’t know about my father’s crime dealings, but then again, I was a very poorly adjusted child. Marianna, too, if I had to guess, which is probably why she’s so protective of these children.

“So you’re like our new uncle then?” Artie asks me. I halt mid-chew; with all of my siblings still childless, I’ve never been called uncle in my life and the sentiment surprises me. Nate speaks for me.

“Yes, he’s just joining the party late,” Nate reaches across the boy and grabs a basket of rolls, depositing one onto both of our plates. Nate pretends to lower his voice, “But you’re not allowed to think he’s cooler than me, I am the cool one here. Obviously.”

Little laughs snort around the table and conversation carries on comfortably between us.

All the while, Marianna sits at my side and I sit by hers, ever aware of the fight that lies unaddressed between us. She plays nice for the children, but does she plan to stay here again? I idly debate on staying here myself if this is the case, but determine that would be too clingy of me.

Lord, I’m so out of practice dating that I don’t even know how to navigate a disagreement with my wife.

“How old are you?” Angel asks.

“Angel, don’t be rude.” Sean scolds.

“It’s alright. I’m thirty-eight,” I say, and it’s excruciating to admit. If they’re disgusted by our age difference, though, the kids don’t let on.

“So four years older than Mom and Dad,” Artie says.

“Did you go to school together?” Angel asks.

“No, but I believe they know my brother Alexei.” I’m relieved they didn’t follow the line of comparing my age to everyone else’s.

Sean nods. “Good guy.”

Conversation veers to topics more interesting than my age, and before long, Willa returns with the baby now fed. Nate scoops her out of Willa’s arms so she can eat, and I’m reminded of what Marianna said in passing after visiting her sister last week. A baby hog , she called him.

When the table is cleared, the kids waste no time rushing back to the living room, and Sean, Vanessa, Marianna, and I are left sitting at the table, tea and coffee steaming in front of us.

Marianna’s chin rests on her fist, her eyes somewhere beyond us as she’s lost in that mind of hers which is so unbearably unknowable to me.

“Your cousin is a fucking piece of work,” Sean says, only to be met by a stern “ Language ,” called from the other room. Sean sighs and lowers his voice, repeating the sentiment again, this time while pressing his pointer finger against the wood surface for emphasis.

This snags Marianna’s attention. “Nikolai? What’d he do?”

“Nothing, but that’s the problem. With the new alliance, new lines have been drawn all over town, and today he’s still giving lip to one of my guys about staying on our side of town.”

“Nikolai is. . .spirited,” I agree, holding back from my own choice words I have for him. “I’ll speak with him.”

“I offered to take care of him,” Marianna says, not exactly words to me, but I still count it as a step forward.

“Nah, his goons will claim it was unprovoked and cause a riot,” Sean says. My sentiments exactly.

“You think they’ll have any muscle with him dead?” Marianna asks. “And whatever, I’m bigger than them.”

Vanessa snickers.

I say, “They don’t know what they want, or who they stand behind. They’re idiots. They don’t care that it’s him leading, so long as it’s not me.”

“What did you do to earn all that?” Sean asks.

“Probably the same thing your family did to earn your brother’s ire.”

“Marry a Morelli?”

“No, clean up shop.” Everyone bobs their heads in understanding.

From what I heard, Cillian was just biding his time, playing good criminal until he could get Vanessa under his thumb and start back into the kind of shit that makes me sick to my stomach.

Little did he know, Vanessa Morelli was not one who could be kept.

“Nikolai feels entitled to lead,” I say. “Thinks I shouldn’t have been the one to inherit.”

“How do you plan to deal with him then?” Vanessa asks.

“We wait him out,” I say. “He’ll mess up, preferably very publicly. We will make an example of him.”

“A baby would probably help with the whole line of succession thing,” Sean says, and everyone shoots him a look, but he’s right. It would help and we all know it.

Marianna tips her mug back, drinking a large gulp of her tea before she stands and grabs my own mostly-empty mug from in front of me.

“I still think we should just kill him,” she says with a shrug before retreating into the kitchen.

Vanessa and Sean share a look before they offer empathetic smiles. Sean stands and thumps my shoulder with his palm. “Good luck, brother.”

When I look back, she’s standing in the doorway with a canvas bag over her shoulder. I’m equal parts relieved and apprehensive. More relieved that she wants to come back with me at all.

“Let’s go home,” she says.

Home .

I waste no time following behind her.